Seek to Misconstrue + a
Failure: The Blog 
February 2012
- Unfinished, But Inhabited
- The Success of Failure, via CNN
- Einstein Actually Had Excellent Grades
- The Physics of Discarded Paper
- The Power of Failing
January 2012
- Offensive Advertising, Increased Sales?
- I Sold Out For Millions, Then Worked At McDonald's
- Steve Jobs on Failure
- The Famous Western Failure
- Thank Goodness for Drug Addicts
December 2011
- It's a Wonderful Failure
- Stadium Destroyed, Reborn
- Failure to Trust the Astronauts
- Failure and the Baggy Pants Tradition
- Failure at The Happiest Place on Earth
- Saving What Was Lost
- FailureBank: A Social Learning Utility
November 2011
- A Thanksgiving Failure
- Harriet Tubman's Clever Lie
- The Failures of Lemieux
- Failed to Return a Text
- Admitting Failure
- A Leaders Job: Support Failure
October 2011
A Thanksgiving Failure
Thanksgiving might be a day of gratitude and joyous celebration, but the signature dish is based on a curious failure. How did turkey get the name “turkey?”
Turkey is a bird that is native to the new world. But it appears in Shakespeare’s plays, so it must have been widespread in England by the 1600s.
One article explains how turkey got its name:
The birds did not come directly from the New World to England; rather, they came via merchant ships from the eastern Mediteranian Sea. Those merchants were called “Turkey merchant” as much the area was part of the Turkish Empire at the time. Purchasers of the birds back home in England thought the fowl came from the area, hence the name “Turkey birds” or, soon thereafter, “turkeys.”
In other words, people called them turkeys because they thought they came from the country of Turkey!
What about other languages? In Hebrew, the word for turkey is tarnagol hodu, which literally translates to “chicken of India.” And in Turkish, the word for turkey is “hindi.” It seems that “turkey” is all wrong no matter how you say it!
Failure is the secret to success. Sometimes we use terminology that is completely wrong, but the error does not create an issue. No matter what the name, turkey is a tasty treat. Even if we failed to name the bird correctly!
Happy Thanksgiving!
